A California state court jury awarded $289 million to terminally ill Dewayne Johnson on grounds that Roundup, the most widely used weedkiller in the world, gave the former school groundskeeper cancer. The maker of the herbicide, Monsanto, said it would appeal the verdict “and continue to vigorously defend this product, which has a 40-year history of safe use,” reported CNN.
The verdict could set a precedent. Hundreds of other patients are suing Monsanto and claiming Roundup is responsible for their cancer. “Johnson’s case was the first to go to trial because doctors said he was near death. And in California, dying plaintiffs can be granted expedited trials,” said CNN.
Jurors in state Superior Court in California decided Johnson should receive $39 million in compensatory damages and $250 million in punitive damages from Monsanto. Johnson applied Roundup 20 to 30 times a year and twice was soaked with the herbicide during accidents, according to his attorneys. Two years after the first accident, in 2014, he was diagnosed with non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma.
A UN agency, the International Center for Research into Cancer, categorized glyphosate, the key ingredient in Roundup, as “probably carcinogenic to humans.” Other regulatory bodies, including the EPA, say it is safe.
“It was a verdict heard around the world,” said The Guardian in a story written by Carey Gillam, author of a 2017 book on glyphosate. “Another trial is set to take place in October in St. Louis, and roughly 4,000 plaintiffs have claims pending with the potential outcomes resulting in many more hundreds of millions, if not billions of dollars in damage awards. They all allege not only that their cancers were caused by exposure to Monsanto’s herbicides, but that Monsanto has long known about, and covered up, the dangers.”